The Crossroads
by Terpsichore ON CRACK
Summary: The night after Team Toguro's defeat, Kazuma wakes up to a sight that gets him thinking about the world and the way he's perceived it.


Kazuma wakes up and the sky outside the hotel window is still a sickly purple, streaked with lines of blue, red, and yellow, the primary colors of weak spirit energy and demon ghosts tangling and curling together in a convoluted knot above the ruined tournament dome. The greater energies hang low and tight to the ground, the powerful beings they belong to aware enough of their strength to keep a grip on their energy signatures and lay low in the wake of the final match. He's on edge, but exhausted, and while his wounds from the Toguro brothers were healed by Yukina's gentle touch, his strength remains depleted, and the residual traces of the ice maiden's unique energy still pulse in his veins. The energy in the air is nearly tangible; he can taste the metallic aura of demonic power mixed in with his still snoring roommate's own crackling, barely restrained spiritual aura.

What he would give to be as oblivious as Urameshi, Kazuma realizes. There would be no more sleep for him that night; the hoards of demon spirits torn from their bodies by the clash of Team Toguro and Team Urameshi still linger in the night air, Reikai's shinigami flitting among them and gathering the still shell-shocked ghosts into groups according to destination before transporting them into the other realm. Every few minutes, another group would be encased in a glowing bubble and vanish from sight. Idly, he wonders if Botan and Koenma are on the job. The toddler prince had been whining about the amount of paperwork he was already missing by coming to watch the tournament at all; the casualties from the final match were sure to bring in a whole fresh stack of work to be done. He sits up and swings his legs over the side of the bed. Now that he's been made aware of the party in whatever part of his brain it is that controls his sixth sense, he might as well join it.

Not bothering to be careful about being quiet, since if Urameshi's own snores and the writhing power right outside couldn't wake him, then nothing else could, Kazuma picks up the first shirt he can find on the floor, squinting at it in the darkness to make sure it isn't bloody before sliding it over his head. Yukina's powers worked wonders, and he marvels at the ease with which his torso moves. It's as if he was never even stabbed through the chest. If she or Botan hadn't been there, he didn't know what they would have done after the fights, between his, Urameshi's, and Kurama's wounds. Hiei remained sullen and enigmatic; Kazuma wasn't even sure if he had ever been wounded at the tournament in a way that wasn't self inflicted or not worth noticing, but the drastic change the nature of Hiei's energy underwent after he absorbed the Black Dragon had hit Kazuma with all the force of a sledgehammer swung into his face, and he was pretty sure the demon had to have been feeling much worse than that, since it was his body having to accustom to the Dragon's destructive energy invading it.

He rubs his eyes, blocking out the disturbing flickering light from the window, and walks out of the room, fumbling with the doorknob through the darkness and against the intense pressure of uncontrolled foreign energy pushing his senses. Hopefully Shizuru is doing better than he is, he hopes, as their shared ability proved to be more of a burden than a gift throughout their childhood. They had both seen more than any child should be forced to see in their dreams, and all with the horrible knowledge that the monsters whispering in their ears about peeling off skin and eating their organs were vividly real, and would gladly do just as they promised if certain barriers weren't in place. The demons Kazuma met at the tournament ranged in character from the ridiculous to the positively sinister, and for all Koto's yelling about blood and gore that he'd just brushed off during the matches, he knows in her words there was a sick truth.

He recalls the expression of twisted pleasure on Karasu's face as he blew Kurama apart, and then, with reluctance, the bloodlust in Youko Kurama's voice when he threatened Ura Urashima with the cruel death tree, and the fox spirit's coldly amused gaze as Karasu fled from his carnivorous motion-sensitive plants. He sees Hiei laughing, whole body glowing with power, as the Black Dragon explodes from the wards on his arm to annihilate Zero and half the stadium, Bui's mad struggle against that same dragon, this time resulting in the destruction of the whole arena and a huge part of the audience. Kazuma takes a deep breath, knowing that their strength could just as easily be directed towards him.

He ambles off down the hall, not caring really where he's going, just as long as it's away from those terrible lights. He takes the elevator down into the deserted lobby, walking through the double doors and straight across the dewy lawn outside to the cliffs, and turning and going along the edge when he meets it, hands in pockets, still resolutely not looking in the direction of the shattered dome.

Demons are real, he thinks, and involuntarily shudders at the memory of the elder Toguro's nails and fingers piercing through his whole body, holding him high above the arena as spectators called for his death, cheering and filling the air with their inhuman shrieks and chants. He could be dead. They wanted him dead. They still wanted him and his friends dead, preferably in some gruesomely violent way. He shouldn't be walking in plain sight, where they can get him. So, Kazuma stops walking abruptly and climbs down a couple of ledges of a slightly staggered cliff, the rocks under his hands sticky from the light mist that rolls across the island at night and the sweat from his own palms. He manouevers his tall body into a small alcove where he sits, looking out at the dark water, the mist flashing unnatural colors, reflecting the eerie light above.

It's slightly better near the sea, with the steady, crashing ebb and flow of the waves beneath him to focus on and pull his hyperaware senses in, dulling and focusing them on the sound of the water. The demons are too busy with other things to notice him, he reassures himself, and then he thinks of Yukina. Yukina is kind, and gentle. She holds Kazuma and heals his wounds, speaking softly and sweetly to everyone, even the irritable shrimp. She smiles an innocent smile, plays with animals, and when she cries, it's not out of pain or fear, but for the sake of the little birds crushed by cruel fingers.

And she is a demon.

The world doesn't make sense anymore, Kazuma thinks, and he puts his head in his hands, holding back a feeling he feels burning in his chest which might turn into tears if he lets it. He could have died today. He was supposed to die today. Toguro's hand plunged into his chest, and despite how completely capable the man-demon was of killing him, it missed his heart by millimeters and left him bleeding and on the floor, but alive. Urameshi thought he was dead anyway, so it had the same effect on his power, raising it to Toguro's level. Toguro sealed his fate with that one attack on Kazuma. He was spared though. Was it mercy on the part of the monster who had been planning their deaths for so long, or kindness? Why isn't anything the way it's supposed to be?

Demons are supposed to be evil, and humans good. It's a fundamental opposition, decided by whatever power created this universe, right? Demons don't cry, demons don't love, demons don't fight for the sake of others, and certainly not with honor. But despite the things he thought he believed, and what he saw at the tournament in the worst of the competitors, Kazuma can see otherwise in his newfound allies and, dare he say it, friends. Rinku, Chu, Jin, Touya, and even Suzuki, rising above their defeats to help the human upstarts and demon traitors that made up Team Urameshi. Yukina, demure and kind. Kurama, burning with fierce love and protection for the mother that wasn't even technically his. Hiei, fighting with pride and honor, and, behind his cool façade and claims otherwise, attending the Ankoku Buujutsukai for the sake of his allies.

Then the cruel humans behind the tournament itself, watching demons tear each other to pieces for entertainment, raking in piles of money made from blood spilled. Yukina's kidnapping, tortured for five years in Tarukane's mansion, for the sake of her valuable teargems. All for money. Sakyo's manipulation of the tournament, going so far as to kill the other human members of the committee to further his sick ambitions, but still stringing Shizuru along. It's all just so sick, Kazuma thinks, and he presses his eyes against his palms, feeling a burning sensation behind them that doesn't bode well for his masculine pride, and he cracks a broken grin.

It was so much easier when things were black and white. When the demons that whispered in his dreams were the only evil he knew, and the humans that fought them were heroic and powerful. Toguro's mercy and Sakyo's evil completely threw him for a loop, right when he had decided that all demons were evil and out for his blood except for Yukina, Kurama, and maybe Hiei, who was only maybe half out for his blood. It just wasn't fair. He shouldn't have to think so hard about these things. The bad guys are supposed to be just that, bad, and nothing else. Why was it so painful then?

The cool, yet humid breeze brushes along his skin, and Kazuma doesn't move, keeping his legs crossed, eyes on his palms and senses focused as much as possible on the waves, just the waves, not the couple hundred dead demons floating in lazy circles against the moon. He had thought he had known that it wasn't just black and white, but shades of grey; his and Urameshi's existence proved that much. They weren't evil, just mildly delinquent. Kazuma had his chivalry and love for kittens, and Urameshi had his affection for Keiko to assure them that they were, indeed, nice guys under the tough exterior. For some reason though, he just hadn't associated that same greyness with his newfound spirit awareness and his decision to fight against what he thought was evil. He hadn't known what he was getting himself into when he finally tapped into his spirit energy. And he hadn't expected to realize that humans and demons were quite similar, except for their varying degrees of physical and spiritual strength.

But that was the situation at hand. Grey and confusing, and he needed to make a decision of what to do. Shun all demons? No, that would include Yukina and the others. Push away humans? That would mean separating from his sister and Urameshi. The options, he finds, are as black and white as he thought the situation was. So then, what should he do? What has he been doing all along? He laughs quietly, unconsciously wiping a tear that slipped unnoticed from his left eye clumsily.  
He loves Yukina. Urameshi is his best friend. Why does he need to pick a side, when it turns out that the sides of good and evil are no longer relative to species the way they were in his nightmares. Kazuma's world, as confusing and downright terrifying as it is at times, is right just the way it is.

He stands on the rocks, tearing his eyes away from the water, and lets the energies of the dead and living demons wash over him completely. He feels the cool intensity of Yukina in his veins. He tastes the salt of the ocean spray melded with the taste of mixing energies, and breathes in the scent of the very human air. And he forgets everything, for just a moment, drinking in the scent of the crossroads.


End file.
